Wyoming, feds agree on plan to manage wolves

BEN NEARYAssociated Press Writer

Published Saturday, May 26, 2007

CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Wyoming and the federal government have reached an agreement on how the state would manage the wolf population after its protection under the Threatened and Endangered Species Act is lifted.

The agreement should allow Wyoming to be included with Montana and Idaho in the process of removing federal protections for wolves in the northern Rockies, possibly by early 2008, said Mitch King, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver.

He had warned recently that Wyoming risked being left out of that process because the state hadn't submitted an acceptable management plan.

"I'm elated. I've said all along that my preference would be to delist the entire listing population segment at once," King said Thursday. Once the process is complete, the delisting plan would be submitted for public comment.

The management plans submitted by Montana and Idaho already had been accepted, but Fish and Wildlife had rejected Wyoming's plan that called for classifying wolves as predators that could be shot on sight in much of the state.

Wyoming took the federal government to court over the issue in 2004, and that lawsuit remains pending even while the state enacted a new wolf management law this spring.

Fish and Wildlife presented a new plan that merged Wyoming's new law and the management plan that was submitted in 2003. Gov. Dave Freudenthal wrote to King on Thursday that the federal draft was a fair presentation of the state's position.

"I am encouraged that we have solved your demand that we submit a wolf management plan," Freudenthal said.

Wolves were reintroduced in the Yellowstone National Park region in the 1990s, and the federal government estimated this spring that about 300 of them are in Wyoming. The new agreement specifies that Wyoming would not let the wolf population in the state drop below 100.

The species would be protected inside Yellowstone and adjoining wilderness areas. A permanent management area would be set in northwestern Wyoming where the state would manage wolves as trophy game animals, but outside its boundaries, the animals would be treated as predators that could be shot on sight.

The proposed management plan that Freudenthal and the federal agency agreed upon calls for a larger wolf management area in northwestern Wyoming than the state originally suggested.

"I just finally had to tell the governor that from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife perspective, that boundary was the only thing that we could find acceptable," King said. The boundary the two sides agreed upon includes private lands on the eastern side of Yellowstone Park.

In his letter to King, Freudenthal indicated that he hoped the boundary could be reconsidered if the delisting of the species was successful.